#watitis2014

w a t i t i s . u w a t e r l o o . c a@ w a t i t i s c o n f

IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT

Shawn Winnington-Ball

#watitis2014

INTRO

• 15 years running UNIX systems• First year thinking IT Service Management• Distilling lots of ITSM literature• Work in progress, snapshot in time• Thoughts are my own, not speaking on

behalf of IST

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KEY POINTS

• Take a more rigorous, structured, planning approach to providing service

• Focus on customer needs, pay particular attention to customer interactions

• Service Management is more than templates and fancy diagrams

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WHAT’S A SERVICE?

• Understanding customer needs and delivering desired outcomes

• An action, not a thingE.g. a server isn't a service, it's a thing; providing a server is the service

In providing servers, there's often more emphasis on the servers bit than the providing

Providing ~ strategizing, designing, testing, releasing, documenting, fixing, etc.

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SERVICE IMPROVEMENT

• ITSM: managing service delivery actions• When are our actions (processes) good

enough?• Process maturity: Ad-hoc to optimized

Journey not destination: declining returns apply

• Our IT organization isn’t a bonzai tree• Throughput is a primary concern

Need to reconcile that with improving the ‘line’

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THE IDEAL

“Here’s what we’ve learned: uncommon service is not born from attitude and effort, but from design choices made in the blueprints of a business model. It’s easy to throw service into a mission statement and periodically do whatever it takes to make a customer happy. What’s hard is designing a service model that allows average employees—not just the exceptional ones—to produce service excellence as an everyday routine.”Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/1839318/so-your-service-model-sucks-heres-4-ways-fix-it

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THE IDEAL

• ‘Four basic truths’:You can’t be good at everything: excel at what customers value most, underperform at what they value least

Someone has to pay for it: charge more, reduce costs, or have customers do some of the work

It’s not your employees’ fault: it’s the process model itself, and how it’s designed/managed

You must manage your customers: involve them in creating, not only consuming

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/1839318/so-your-service-model-sucks-heres-4-ways-fix-it

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A STRUCTURED APPROACH

• How to proceed toward this ideal?• Two aims

Excellence as a general ethos (inspired vision)

Specific, focused improvements

• ApproachesCustomer-inward, internal-outward, both?

Make the things that work commonplace (‘bright spots’)

Attitude, Behaviour, Culture: Organizational Change

Use Best Practices for reference and guidance

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OBLIGATIONS TO CUSTOMERS

• Customer have come to expect that a service will provide…

Utility (does it meet my needs)

Warranty (how well does it perform)

Experience (how do I feel using it)

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SERVICE DESIGN

• Service Design – not in the ITIL sense, but in the artistic-designer-usability sense

• Systematic approach to designing service experience

• “It’s not what we do, it’s what they get”• Focus on touchpoints; value-laden

interactions• Decomposing service into component parts

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SERVICE DESIGN

Source: http://www.cooper.com/journal/2014/07/service-design-101

ServiceStrategy

ServiceTransition

ServiceOperation

CSI

Service Design

Experiential perspective: Process perspective:

Copyright © AXELOS Limited 2011

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SERVICE DESIGN

• Service blueprint: enhanced swimlane diagram

• Visual effect: you can see how the customer interacts with the service, and how the service is fulfilled

• Value is not the diagram itself, but what you learn in the process of creating it

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Source: http://www.cooper.com/journal/2014/08/service-blueprints-laying-the-foundation

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SERVICE DESIGN

• BenefitsConsistent experience across services

Fail points: where can the service go wrong?

Timing: What’s the execution time of each step of the service? When does perception of quality begin to wane?

Evidence: what tangible effects does the customer receive throughout their interaction?

• Need true services first (hint: service catalog)• Which services should get this treatment?

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BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE AND SERVICE

• How people perceive service interactions• Advice for smoothing the way

Get bad experiences over with early

Break up pleasure but combine pain

Finish strong

Give them choice

Let them stick to their habits

• ‘Natural tendency for IT to focus on internal needs and preferences at the expense of the customer’s experience’Source: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/operations/using_behavioral_science_to_improve_the_customer_experience

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IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT

• ITSM is not just ITIL• More a quality management philosophy

around how service is provided• COBIT (governance) MOF (based on ITIL),

CMMI (process maturity), ISO 20000 (ITSM standard), USMBOK (generic SM)

• People develop their own take on ITSM from various sources, and often sell it: think VARs

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WHY BEST PRACTICES

• Something is evidently broken or doesn’t work well, OR

• Things generally work, but demand outstrips capacity; can never get everything done

Prioritization: pick and choose according to criteria (loudest voice doesn’t always count)

Inefficiency: spending too much valuable staff time on practices that have potential to be improved

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MY SUGGESTIONS

• Read peopleTwitter list: https://twitter.com/droitwich/lists/itsm

Webinars: Brighttalk has plenty; many ITSM consultants freely disburse their views

• Take ITIL Foundations training, and write the exam; great reinforcement

• Whiteboard a process, question everything, see what comes of the effort

• I’m always up to chat about this stuff

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TAKEAWAYS

• Ask yourselves what ‘getting better’ means to you: is it throughput, technique, or both?

• Best Practices are tools to help solve problems

• Be sensitive to the customer experience; it’s not merely enough to offer a service anymore

• Think big

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THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING!

• swball@uwaterloo.ca• x45297

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USEFUL LINKS

"Beyond the Service Catalog to Service Design." EDUCAUSE Homepage. Web. 2 Dec. 2014. <http://www.educause.edu/annual-conference/2014/beyond-service-catalog-service-design>.

England, Rob. “Basic Service Management”. Two Hills, 2011. Print.

"Service Design 101." Cooper. Web. 2 Dec. 2014. <http://www.cooper.com/journal/2014/07/service-design-101>.

"Service Blueprints: Laying the Foundation." Cooper. Web. 2 Dec. 2014. <http://www.cooper.com/journal/2014/08/service-blueprints-laying-the-foundation>.

"So Your Service Model Sucks--Here's 4 Ways To Fix It." Fast Company. Web. 2 Dec. 2014. <http://www.fastcompany.com/1839318/so-your-service-model-sucks-heres-4-ways-fix-it>.

Shostack, G. Lynn. "Designing Services That Deliver." Harvard Business Review . 1 Jan. 1984. Web. 2 Dec. 2014. <https://hbr.org/1984/01/designing-services-that-deliver/ar/1>.

"Using Behavioral Science to Improve the Customer Experience." McKinsey & Company. Web. 2 Dec. 2014. <http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/operations/using_behavioral_science_to_improve_the_customer_experience>.